GEORGIA ROSE PHILLIPS ON THE BEARCAT: CULTS, CONTROL, AND THE WOMEN WE FOLLOW
By Nicole Fuge
Georgia Rose Phillips knows how to write into the ache. The award-winning writer’s debut novel, The Bearcat, is a taut and haunting story inspired by a real-life cult leader and the women drawn into her orbit.
It’s a portrait of power, longing, and the fragile line between care and control. In this conversation, Georgia opens up about the women behind the novel, the history that shaped them, and the complicated ways we search for love, meaning—and somewhere to belong.
Could you tell us the plot of The Bearcat in one sentence?
The Bearcat is an imaginative reconstruction of the early life and family of Australia’s notorious cult leader, Anne Hamilton Byrne.
Have you had an interest in cults previously? Was this an inspiration for your writing of the novel?
Yes, I have always been interested in cults, organised religion and the idea of countercultures or even groups that have somehow found exit points from the social conditions that govern our everyday etc. However, it was Anne’s gender and the name of the cult, The Family, that inspired me to begin sketching out fictional doubles for both Anne and her mother, Florence.
The possibility of a woman inhabiting the role of a cult leader subverted the archetype in my mind of what a cult leader is and drove me to consider how the relationship to power (and powerlessness) might look different.
The name of the cult, The Family, also led me to speculate about what Anne might have lost that marred her with a deep insatiability to build a cult fashioned in the likeness of a family.
These questions opened doors to other questions that I set out to explore and resolve creatively.
You have said that you’re interested in fiction that explores interiority that radiates outwards. Could you explain what you mean by that?
I am interested in the opportunity fiction provides us with to try and comprehend the worlds each of us carry inside us. I am particularly drawn to works that can do this whilst simultaneously examining how the politics and structures that underpin our external words impinge upon our emotional and intellectual lives. i.e. both Florence and Anne in the novel are suffering with gendered behavioural expectations placed upon them and these have become deeply internalised.
Your day job is in academia at the University of Adelaide. How do you think your background in research and study informs your fiction writing?
There is a huge amount of overlap between my research and creative practice. The research heavily informs what I write about and how I formally navigate the exploration of my subject matter. Whilst I was working on this novel, I was heavily researching the changing shape of the literary historical novel in tandem with the legacy of literary modernism on contemporary writing (particularly writing that engages with history/the past). I was reading a lot of philosophy of history too—which also greatly influenced the novel.
Is there a book that made you decide you wanted to be a writer?
There are so many! However, when writing The Bearcat I did frequently return to Han Kang and Jenny Erpenbeck’s body of works for their courage, their perspicuity and their poignant reminders of what literature is and how it might accrue some kind of force.
Can you give us three of your favourite “things” right now?
Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson
The television show Severance
The Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnolds
What’s your earliest reading memory?
Seeing my older sister lying in bed with a book reading. Picking up one of her books and climbing into my own bed on the other side of the room. Holding the book upside down in front of my face. I remember after a long period of staring at the alien symbols thinking I am not sure about this reading business.
How did you find the juxtaposition between your historical research (writing the ‘real’ Anne and the people around her) and the imagined/created aspects of her life and character?
This was one of the most challenging aspects of writing the novel. I did a lot of working backwards, speculating and extrapolating. Anne’s adolescence is limply documented, and I was particularly interested in imaginatively reconstructing what might have happened during this formative period. I often felt I was working with historical seeds. I would find a detail such as Lionel’s death in a car accident. I would take this seed and plant it as the basis for a scene. As I extrapolated on that detail, I often thought about the potential resonance of that moment to the broader character arc I had imagined for Anne.
What's up next for Georgia Rose Phillips?
My next novel is based on an intergenerational relationship between two women who form a connection through a love of art, literature, philosophy and music. I am interested in exploring the limits of reality, the violence of silence and how shame drives certain behaviours. I am also chipping away at a book length collection of poems.
MUSE PAPER
ISSUE 05